AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Friday, February 27, 2009

The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, has said that ‘President Obama’s administration will seek to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its support for terrorism.’

Accusing Iran of supporting ‘terrorism’ is really not a good way to kick off talks aimed at easing tensions in the Middle East and demonstrates just how insincere the US really are about talking with the Iranians. Beneath the façade of goodwill gestures like ‘talks’ lies the determination to continue, regardless of the outcome of such talks, the demonisation of Iran. The Israelis have even indicated that the talks should end quickly so that they can then move on to the next stage whereby they and the US bomb the Iranians into regime change. The ‘talks’ are merely a prelude designed for propaganda purposes to build public support for military action when the ‘talks’ inevitably fail.

And why will they fail? They’ll fail because they were never intended to succeed.

Labelling Hamas and Hezbollah ‘terrorists’ and then accusing Iran of supporting ‘terrorists’ puts Iran in a ‘can’t win’ situation before the talks even start. The same applies to Irans so-called nuclear ambitions. Iran has repeatedly told the world that it has no nuclear weapons program and that it’s only ‘nuclear ambition’ is to produce electricity yet Israel, the US and their western allies continue to accuse Iran of having a ‘nuclear weapons program’ despite the continued total lack of evidence of Iran having any such weapons program.

The ‘talks’ are doomed to fail before they even start. They are just window dressing to placate those who insist that they at least try to talk before bombing them into regime change.

The rhetoric Obama uses is no different from the rhetoric that Bush used. Both accuse Iran of supporting ‘terrorism’ and both accuse Iran of having a ‘nuclear weapons program’.

It is time for the world to insist that the US stop supporting the real terrorists of the Middle East – the Israelis.

The world should also insist that Israel give up its nuclear weapons before it starts accusing other nations in the region of having a ‘nuclear weapons program’.

“We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense. And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken -- you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

These words could well have been spoken by any Hamas leader after the Israeli onslaught into the Gaza. In fact they were spoken by President Obama at his inauguration speech.

It’s not so much the West’s so-called values that ‘they’ hate about ‘us’; it’s the hypocrisy and self-righteous arrogance that expose ‘us’ as the true terrorists in this world.

One should be reminded that the only people on this planet standing on land that doesn’t belong to them and who are killing the owners of that land in droves are the US, the Israelis and their Western allies. Yet, somehow, it is Iran that is to be demonised and then bombed into oblivion.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

A lot of hope over the years has been placed in the idea of a ‘two-state solution’ whereby the state of Israel would exist peacefully side-by-side with an independent Palestinian sovereign state. However, as the true face of Zionist extremism emerges after the recent Israeli elections, we see now that the dream of a two-state solution has been only an illusion designed to buy time for the Israelis to find ways to marginalise the Palestinians further with the ultimate aim of clearing the Gaza Strip and the West Bank of the Palestinians and creating an area completely under Israeli control that would eventually be settled by Jews only to become part of a Greater Israel.

While the one-state bi-national solution has always been an option, it never really gained any real traction – until now – because of the unwillingness of either side to allow such an option to work. The position of both sides seemed intractable and, to a certain extent, still does. However, the geopolitical reality on the ground has deemed it necessary for the one-state solution to be seriously reconsidered if, for no other reason, than it is now the only viable option left. The alternatives are that there will either be a one-state solution, but it will not be one that Palestinians will have any role in, or things will carry on as they are for another sixty years or so.

There’s a certain irony in the fact that the reason a one-state bi-national solution is looking more attractive now than ever it was before is because the very people that are so dead-set against it, the Zionist Israelis, have already begun to create the physical foundations needed to create just such a state and that is by building their settlements, albeit as Jews-only communities, inside of Palestinian lands while, at the same time, there are already Palestinians living as Arab Israelis, in Israel.

While Kadima and other earlier Israeli governments may have talked about a two-state solution, the reality has always been that they would never accept the conditions Palestinians – Hamas or Fatah – had laid down for such a solution to be realised. It simply never was going to happen and, as we now know, now that the right-wing Zionists have the upper hand in Israel, it never will.

Slowly but surely progressives, both Israeli and Palestinian, are coming to the conclusion that the one-state bi-national solution is, indeed, the only solution but they are going to have a hard job convincing their respective fellow countrymen. It is, therefore, up to the rest of world to help the peoples of the region to see that it is the only option. Netanyahu and his right-wing Zionist allies both in Israel and elsewhere have made it quite clear that there will never ever be the option of a two-state solution. All that Palestinians can expect now is the destruction of what little is left of the Palestinian communities that are in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It is now up to the people of the world to demand the only viable solution left to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the one-state bi-national solution is clearly the only solution.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Israel’s navy commander, Maj. Gen. Eliezer Marom, said in a rare statement reported in Ha’aretz: "An axis of evil coordinated between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas will require Israel to wage a campaign against it that will require our best efforts and abilities."

The remarks go to the heart of what Israel’s ulterior motives really are when it comes to discussing Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’. Israel is desperate to keep up the pressure against Iran in any way it possibly can even if it means provoking Hamas or Hezbollah or Syria, or even all of them, in order to escalate the confrontation to ultimately involve Iran and the US. The aim, of course, is not to eliminate Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’ – Israel, the US and the West all know that Iran doesn’t actually have a weapons program – but to achieve regime change in Iran just as it did in Iraq in 2003. And, just as in the run up to the invasion and destruction of Iraq, the Israelis and the US and their allies are accusing Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Just as Israel, with the help of Zionist Israeli citizens that happened also to be in the US administration under George W. Bush, wanted regime change in Iraq in order to be rid of Saddam's influence and support of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, so the Israelis are manipulating affairs in and around their region in order to be rid of Irans influence and support of Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah.

In 2006 the Israelis tried to provoke their final confrontation with Iran by attacking the Gaza when they claimed one of their soldiers had been ‘kidnapped’ and then, just days later, they attacked Hezbollah in Lebanon when they again tried the old ‘kidnapped soldiers’ routine as casus belli for the attack. All of this was done in the hope of provoking Iran to retaliate either directly or indirectly by supplying Hezbollah with increasingly sophisticated arms.

But Iran didn’t bite.

Then the Israelis got desperate. They tried again to provoke Iranian ire by massively and indiscriminately attacking the Palestinian people bottled up in the Gaza in the hope that Hezbollah might come to their support and then, as that escalates, the hope then was that Iran would be drawn in.

But Hezbollah didn’t bite and nor did Iran.

So twice now Israel has failed to draw Iran into a final confrontation. And twice now Israel has failed in its war aims of destroying Hezbollah and Hamas despite the shocking and disgusting loss of innocent lives in Lebanon and the Gaza.

But now Israel looks likely to have a new Prime Minister, the right-wing Zionist and extremist Benjamin Netanyahu, who is even more determined than Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak to realise the final confrontation with Iran in order to destroy Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria.

It now seems that it is Hezbollah’s turn again to receive special attention from the Israelis as they renew their efforts for their final confrontation with Iran.

Besides talking the talk by ratcheting up the propaganda generally against both Iran over its ‘nuclear weapons program’ and Hezbollah having got new rockets from Iran ready for their next ‘war against Israel’, the Israelis are also doing their bit to physically provoke Israel by constantly flying their attack jets low into Lebanese airspace.

Obama too is ramping up the Iran nuclear issue with his office recently ‘expressing concerns’ about Iran’s increased stockpile of ‘enriched uranium’ demonstrating that the Obama administration is also willing to attempt to hoodwink the people of the world, despite all the talk about ‘negotiations’ with Iran, by using the ‘enriched uranium’ scare tactic of propaganda when they know that the uranium the Iranians do have is enriched only for use in electrical power generation and not anywhere near the levels of enrichment needed for nuclear weapons. Nothing has really changed at the White House.

During Israel’s onslaught into the Gaza a number of rockets were launched from just inside the Lebanese border into Israel. Hezbollah denied all knowledge of these unsophisticated weapons and no other group in Lebanon made any claim of responsibility. It was strongly speculated that Israel may have launched these rockets themselves using munitions from their arsenal of captured weapons from the 2006 war. Only yesterday another Katyusha rocket, again, more than likely launched by Mossad operators or collaborators in Mossad pay from inside Lebanon, hit Israel. Israel launched an immediate artillery barrage into Lebanon in response in a deliberate attempt to provoke Hezbollah into a counter attack. Again, Hezbollah didn’t bite.

It’s just a matter of time before Israel claims that Hezbollah has launched a much larger rocket into Israel. It will kill Israelis and give Israel the excuse it needs to launch another even more terrible war against the Lebanese people in the hope that it will escalate into the final confrontation they so desperately seek against Iran.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Until recently, many commentators on Palestinian-Israeli affairs had been loathe to discuss the parallels between Nazism and Zionism out of respect for those European Jews that perished during World War 2 at the hands of the Nazis. It was, perhaps, always hoped that the Palestinian-Israeli debacle might have been resolved peacefully and equitably for all before the parallels became too apparent.

Regretfully, there has been no such resolution and, particularly in the light of recent events in the Gaza and the resurgence of the extreme right-wing at the recent Israeli polls, the parallels are now inescapable and can no longer be ignored.

The most striking parallel between Nazism and Zionism is its basic aims. While Hitler and his Nazis sought to create a state of racial Germans and to expand the nation into a Greater Germany via ‘Lebensraum’ at the expense of peoples that occupied nations to his east, the Zionists seek to create a Jews-only racial nation at the expense of peoples that occupied the lands and the nations adjoining to create living space for a Greater Israel.

Just as Hitler and his Nazis were not content with the provisions of what they considered to be the restrictive terms of the Treaty of Versailles that created the post-First World War Weimar Republic of Germany, so the Israelis were not content with the provisions of the restrictive conditions of the 1948 UN Partition of Palestine that created the post-Second World War state of Israel.

Just as Hitler believed there was not enough living space for a future Germany to properly function and prosper under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles so Israel’s leader, David Ben-Gurion, believed that there was not enough living space for a future Israel to thrive and prosper within the terms of the UN Partition Plan.

And so within days of the Partition Plan having been approved by the UN on 29 November 1947, Palestinians protested and the Israelis used the protests as an excuse to attack Palestinians beyond the borders of the partition delineating the new Israel from Palestine and by December 1947 the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their lands by Israelis had begun in earnest with some 75,000 Palestinians being made refugees even at this early stage of the ethnic cleansing. By January 1948 there were mass expulsions of Palestinians by Israelis from several villages accompanied by several massacres including the Deir Yassin massacre. A hastily assembled Arab irregular volunteer army attempted to thwart the Israeli onslaught to little effect.

By the time the British mandate ended the Israelis had already grabbed substantial tracts of Palestinian lands. The day before the British mandate ended, Israel, on 14 May 1948, declared itself and independent state. The following day the British formally withdrew.

From day one the new Israeli state continued to move into Palestinian allocated lands. The Arab League, supported by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, sent troops into Palestine to help the Palestinians protect themselves from Israeli invasion and aggression. Again, their intervention which became known as the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, achieved little by way of stopping the Israelis grab more land that was not theirs or stopping the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their lands, indeed, the Arab League’s intervention served only to give the Israelis further justification to annex even more of the Palestinian’s land and towns.

Just as Hitler’s armies moved in to newly occupied lands and began to ethnically cleanse it of Jews so Ben-Gurion and his thugs ethnically cleansed newly occupied Palestinian lands of Arabs.

Prior to the 1967 war, Israel had spent years provoking Syria over the Golan Heights where the Israelis sent bulldozers into the demilitarised zones gradually ploughing into Syrian territory testing and prodding Syrian patience. In the Gaza the Israelis provoked the Egyptians under whose jurisdiction the Gaza belonged. As the Arab nations reacted and began to gather their forces to deter the Israelis from further provocation, the Israelis used the ‘crisis’ as a casus belli to pre-emptively attack its Arab neighbours and seize the Gaza, as well as the rest of the Sinai from the Egyptians, the Golan Heights from the Syrians and the West Bank from Jordan who the Israelis had provoked earlier in November 1966 by attacking Samu in the West Bank, then under Jordanian control.

Like Hitler, Israel always blamed the nations they went to war with for having started it yet such blame is totally transparent and merely used as excuses for invasion and annexation of land that did not belong to them.

Like Hitler, during times of relative quiet, the Zionists talked of peace but at the same time secretly planned for war. The Zionists still eyed the Lebanese lands to their north and pondered how Israel might flourish from the waters of the Litani River. In 1978 Israel used the civil war that had been raging in Lebanon since 1975 as an excuse to invade the country; the invasion was called Operation Litani but the occupation was cut short when the UN ordered the Israelis to leave. However, they left behind a militia loyal to the Israelis who vowed they’d return. In 1982, they did just that.

In early 1982 the Israelis secretly planned another invasion but the then US Secretary of State, Alexander Haigh, told the Israelis that such an invasion could not happen without there being some major provocation. By June 1982, Israel had manipulated just such a provocation from Yasser Arafat’s PLO, then based in Lebanon. On 6 June 1982 Israel again invaded Lebanon. This time the UN demand for the Israelis to withdraw was vetoed by the US. Ariel Sharon, then Israeli Defence Minister, used the opportunity of invasion and occupation to destroy the Palestinians in Lebanon where Arafat and his PLO were based. Israeli forces, supported by Lebanese fascist Phalangists, forced out the PLO which fled to Tripoli, and then attempted to murder all the remaining Palestinian civilians that were in the refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila.

The Israelis struggled to hold on to south Lebanon and by 2000 had found that the resistance movement Hezbollah was too much for the Israelis to sustain their occupation.

By around this time the Zionists had come to the realisation that their dream of a Greater Israel needed to be modified. The Sinai was returned to the Egyptians but the Israelis hung on to the Gaza Strip that they had by now begun to colonise with settlements. They had also begun to expand into the occupied West Bank with settlements and outposts. The Golan Heights, already taken during the 1967 war, had been thoroughly colonised and annexed into Israel.

Clearly, the Israelis had adopted a far more cautious approach to their expansionist dreams. Resistance to their expansionism had been much tougher than they had expected especially after having experienced how easy it had been for them in the early days in 1947 and 1948. With the world taking a keen interest in what was going on in this part of the world the Israelis knew that they would not be able to continue getting away with the crimes that they had managed to get away with so far. A new approach was called for; one that essentially involved taking two steps forward then one back in order to make it look as though Israel was actually conceding ground to the Palestinians. In September 2005, then Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, withdrew all the settlements from the Gaza ostensibly to demonstrate that he was willing to seek peace with the Palestinians. In reality the pullout was for far more practical reasons. The cost of keeping troops in the Gaza to protect the few settlers there was far too prohibitive. The hope was that, after pulling out, the Palestinians in the Gaza would continue to attack Israel thus providing a casus belli at a later date to launch an all-out invasion of the Gaza and the eventual transfer of its inhabitants. The ploy was to quietly put increasing pressure on the Gazans to make life intolerable for them in order to provoke them into launching attacks against the Israelis to deter them from continuing to pressure the Gaza. At the same time Israel used propaganda against Hamas by trying to expose the Gazans as being unreasonable due to the Israelis having given them their land back yet ‘they still choose to attack Israel’.

Just as the Nazis ghettoised the Jews of Europe into Warsaw and began to squeeze them into extinction and deportation for those that survived, so the Zionists of Israel have been planning the same for the Gazans. Just as the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto resisted the Nazis so the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip ghetto resisted Israeli attempts at deprivation, starvation and the destruction of any economy and production in the Strip. It is exactly the reaction that the Nazis wanted from the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and it is exactly the reaction that the Zionists wanted from the Palestinians in the Gaza Ghetto. Ultimately the aim of the Zionists is to clear the Gaza ghetto of the Palestinians just as the Nazis ultimately cleared and razed the Warsaw Ghetto with the intention of rebuilding it and filling it with ethnic Germans.

Just as the Nazis used overwhelming military force to bomb their enemies into submission so the Zionists have used their overwhelming military might, particularly in recent years, to attempt to bomb their enemies into submission. In 2006, the Israelis claimed that one of their soldiers, Gilad Shalit, had been ’kidnapped’ by Gazan fighters. This was used as a casus belli to launch a Blitzkrieg on the Gaza which killed many innocent civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure. Less than three weeks later, on the pretext that two of their soldiers had been captured, Israel launched a Blitzkrieg against the Lebanese people with their propaganda claiming that they were only attacking Hezbollah over the ‘kidnapping’. Despite their claims, the vast majority of those killed in the onslaught were civilians and, again, most of the destruction was to civilian infrastructure.

These attacks were designed to provoke Iran in to taking action against Israel by supplying Hezbollah with increasingly more sophisticated weapons to use against Israel in order to provide an excuse for the US and Israel to attack Iran to bring about regime change in Iran. This would then leave Israel free to deal with Hamas and Hizbollah hoping that their resistance would collapse without Iranian support.

But the Iranians didn’t bite. Hezbollah put up a stiff resistance and Israeli casualties began to mount. In the end the Israelis were unable to prevail and the US had to call a reluctant end to Israel’s escapade in to Lebanon via the UN after international condemnation of Israel’s actions.

But it hasn’t stopped the Zionists from trying again to rouse the Iranians by attacking Palestinians. In December 2008 Israel, on the pretext of claiming Hamas had broken a ceasefire agreement (when, in fact, it had been Israel that had broken the agreement) again launched a devastating attack against the hapless Gazan people. Again, the Nazi-like Blitzkrieg took its toll on Gazan civilians including many women and children. After the intial aerial bombing of civilians the ground forces rolled into the Gaza in tanks destroying and killing anything in their path including women and children that had come out of their homes waving white handkerchiefs in surrender whom they shot in cold blood.

Just as the Nazis had executed captured fighters in Eastern Europe and in the Warsaw Ghetto during the uprising there, so the Zionists executed captured fighters in the Gaza. Others were taken to Israel and are still yet to be accounted for.

Commentators and critics of Zionism have every right now to demonstrate and highlight, without any fear of being labelled an ‘anti-Semite’, the unmistakable parallels and comparisons between modern Zionism and twentieth-century Nazism. The Zionists and their supporters have abused for far too long the ‘anti-Semite’ label which they believe has protected them from accusations of behaving like the Nazis that once persecuted them.

The real shame now is that the term ‘anti-Semite’, which once was in legitimate usage to describe white-supremacist Jew-haters and their like, has now been reduced to a transparent propaganda label used to distract the world from the abuses and crimes of the Zionists as they emulate those that once persecuted them and who really were anti-Semites.

Despite being Semites themselves, one has to wonder if the true anti-Semites of the twenty-first century aren’t the Zionist criminals of Israel.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

President Obama’s not entirely unexpected announcement regarding extra troops into Afghanistan has finally been made. This confirms that the President has failed to learn the lessons of previous world leaders that no amount of extra troops in that most rugged of countries, defended by some of the worlds most tenacious people, will ever be able to prevail in an invasion where the invaders are not wanted.

It’s a shame that somehow the US managed to con many of the Western world’s leaders into helping them in their hapless cause. So far tens of thousands have been killed on all sides including thousands of innocent civilians and children and over a thousand coalition forces. And the war hasn’t been confined just to Afghanistan. Many of the Taliban fighters are actually Pakistanis who cross the border into Afghanistan from Pakistan to fight the Westerner invaders and then retreat back into Pakistan when their enemy gets the better of them. It’s classic guerrilla tactics which can rarely be beaten by foreign invaders.

The problem stems from the fact that most Taliban fighters from that region don’t actually regard themselves as ‘Afghanis’ or ‘Pakistanis’ but, rather, Pushtans. To them the border is simply some arbitrary line drawn by a British colonialist, Mortimer Durand, (the border is known as the Durand line) who didn’t have a clue what he was doing (indeed, it has been said that he was drunk at the time he drew the line). These borderlands are extremely rugged, which the Taliban know like the back of their hand, and very ‘porous’ which they use to great advantage knowing that, up until recently, they have been relatively safe once back inside Pakistan territory.

The reality is that the Taliban now has as much influence in the border regions of Pakistan as it does in Afghanistan, if not more, to the point where the Pakistan government, much to the chagrin of the US and their allies, have conceded that Sharia Islamic law may now dominate in the region.

So far, US and allied actions inside Pakistan against the Taliban and their supporters has been, if not quite covert, then very low key with the Western media not widely reporting allied incursions that take place beyond the Afghan borders. In the main, attacks against the Taliban inside Pakistan have been via UAV aircraft that have launched missiles at various targets, many of which have only succeeded in killing innocent villagers sometimes with entire families being wiped out in by a single bomb as it mistakenly hits a family home.

Recently the Taliban have taken to destroying US and NATO supplies that use routes from Pakistan into Afghanistan to supply the allies inside Afghanistan. The Pakistan government had made only half-hearted attempts, at the insistence of the US, to stop the attacks on the allied supply lines but as soon as the Pakistani troops turn up, the Taliban simply melted away and then returned once the troops had gone. But this latest development, whereby the Pakistan government have allowed Taliban dominated areas to have Sharia law, is, crucially, being viewed by NATO, as a truce between the Pakistan government and the Taliban. While, for now, the US has taken a rather quieter stance preferring to not comment on the new relationship between the Pakistan government and the Taliban, it is clearly of considerable concern to the US.

The US need to maintain a rapport with the Pakistani government which clings only tenuously to power in Pakistan. It is this that is of major concern to the allies. Pakistan is teetering on the brink of being governed by a strongly Islamic government that has strong links and sympathies to the Taliban if the present government fails. A nuclear-armed Pakistani government with strong Taliban sympathies horrifies the Western governments. (Recently a very senior Assistant Secretary for International Policy with the Australian Defence Department personally told me that the Australian government have very strong ‘concerns’ about Pakistan and that ‘Pakistan is going to be big, big, trouble for the West in the near future’ though my feeling now is that it is actually going to be the West that is going to be big, big, trouble for Pakistan.)

It is Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, of course, that is of the biggest concern to the allies. The US cannot invade Pakistan so its only alternative is to maintain a strong relationship with those elements within Pakistan that are friendly with the US and to provide massive amounts of money to the Pakistani government to keep them on side. In short, the US, if they haven’t done so already, need to pay off Pakistani individuals who would be able to assist US and allied special forces to locate and ‘secure’ all of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons before they fell into the hands of a Taliban-sympathetic Pakistani government.

The recent treaty between the Taliban in the North-West of Pakistan and the Pakistani government will certainly not instil confidence in the US administration to feel secure with Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in the hands of a government that is happy to do deals with the Taliban. It is with this in mind that the troop ‘surge’ in Afghanistan may be viewed with more in mind than simply confronting the Taliban with increased force just on Afghan soil.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Apparently the Israelis are very upset over the fact that unexploded ordnance that the Israelis dropped on the Gaza during their last criminal onslaught into the ghetto, and subsequently gathered up by Hamas, has gone missing or, as the Israelis would have us believe, ‘stolen’.

Never mind that this ordnance was delivered by Israel to Hamas’s door, literally in most cases, but now they accuse Hamas of stealing it. The inference is they actually want it back once the UN discovers where it’s been taken to!

I’m sure Hamas will find a way of returning the explosives to Israel. One shouldn’t be surprised if it is via the same way as it was delivered to Hamas – by air mail. One can only hope that in doing so it causes less damage than when it was first used. At least the message will get through.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The UK ‘Daily Telegraph’ reports that Israel has declared a covert war against Iran citing US intelligence sources. The intention, according to the report, is for Israel to ‘decapitate’ Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program by assassinating key nuclear personnel.

The reason given for this new line in policy is that Israel now does not expect the new administration in the US to support an attack on Iran and so, therefore, feels the need to go it alone against Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program.

However, the news report is patently a propaganda piece because Israel is very much aware that Iran does not actually have a ‘nuclear weapons program’. Israel’s actual goal is nothing less than ‘regime change’ with the propaganda about Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’ simply being an excuse to garner world-wide public opinion that they hope to convert into support for the Israelis position if and when it does attack Iran. The ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ accusation will convert to a casus belli when they feel the moment is right.

Given that Israel knows that Iran has no nuclear weapons program one might ask what the Israeli game plan might be now.

Until recently the world seems to have accepted that Israel’s ‘targeted assassinations’ policy is a legitimate form of self-defence for the Israelis. They have used it frequently and openly against Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza and covertly elsewhere in Syria and Lebanon and in Europe where Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Prime Ministerial hopeful, was said to have been involved in Mossad assassinations. However, since the Israeli attack on the Gaza, seen by the world as an unnecessary and fruitless overkill that resulted in the deaths and wounding of thousands of innocent civilians and which showed Israel in its true colours, the world may now be able to see Israeli policies from a different perspective. Certainly there has been a noticeable decrease in the number of assassinations carried out in Western countries.

Meanwhile though, the Israelis hope that Iran has been demonised enough now by the propaganda seeded within Western mainstream media for the Western world to accept that Israel has a legitimate right to continue to use assassination as a weapon against Iran; not so much for the purposes of stopping Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’, but more for eliciting an Iran reaction like a retaliatory assassination of an Israeli political or military leader. This, of course, would be hailed as an atrocious terrorist act which the Israelis, and so they would hope, the US, would then claim as a legitimate casus belli to attack Iran. If the Iranians didn’t retaliate then the Israelis have lost nothing while the Iranians lose a few nuclear scientists.

And, naturally, one couldn’t put it past the Israelis to ‘assassinate’ one of their own in a false flag killing if they couldn’t get the Iranians infuriated enough to oblige the Israelis by doing it for them.

Monday, February 16, 2009

An interesting report appeared in the ‘Jerusalem Post’ today saying that the IDF had assessed the casualty figures and determined that the Palestinian authorities in the Gaza have got it all wrong.

The IDF don’t explain what it is that makes their figures more believable than those of the medical personnel on the ground in the Gaza but the headline may give some hint as to the motivation of the IDFs claim: ‘World duped by Hamas’s civilian death toll figures’. Could it be a propaganda ploy?

There is no explanation whatsoever as to how the IDF arrived at their figures and nor is there any evidence to support any of their claims.

In recent weeks there has been a great deal of serious talk about those Israelis responsible for the carnage in the Gaza being brought before the International Criminal Court on war crime charges now that the Palestinian National Authority has recognised the ICCs authority in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It is a reflection on how serious the IDF view this development that they should go to such lengths as to cynically create the propaganda of fudging the Gaza casualty figures in order to distract from the reality of having to face the International Criminal court in the Hague.

If the court did indict Israeli military and political chiefs, it would be the responsibility of signatory nations to ensure that those indicted are arrested if they arrive on their soil. There are also some nations, including the UK, Belgium and others, that also have their own separate laws about arresting and trying war criminals even when the crimes were not committed in that country. The IDF is clearly worried about war crimes accusations and have obviously launched a campaign of propaganda to attempt to counteract war crime charges. Their actions, however, serve only to highlight their guilt and also to make it more imperative to ensure that the real figures are accurate.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

No matter who wins the Israeli elections, the Palestinians will be the losers.

At the time of writing, both Tzipi Livni of Kadima and Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud, are claiming victory. While Livni’s Kadima has more seats than Netanyahu’s Likud, Livni will unlikely be able to convince third place getter, the ultra right-wing Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beiteinu, to join her in forming a coalition government. This means that Netanyahu will likely form an alliance with Lieberman to become the next Prime Minister. But before that happens, the Israeli system offers the leader of the party that has won the most seats the first opportunity to form a government regardless of how unlikely it is to happen.

This, in turn, means that it may be some time before any government is formed as a result of the elections and it also means that Olmert will continue as caretaker Prime Minister until such time as Lieberman decides who he is going to support. Then a new government will be formed.

What Israel will end up with is more of the same regardless of who forms a government. The Zionists will still dominate. The only difference will be Livni will pretend to talk about peace with the Palestinians while Netanyahu won’t. Nonetheless, Israel, the Palestinians and the world may have to wait weeks before we know who will be the winner and the next Prime Minister.

And, of course, whoever it is, the losers will be the Palestinian people. However, if the right-wing blocs of Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas parties get together in a coalition, it won’t only be the Palestinians that lose but the Middle East and the entire world.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The recent disastrous bushfire in Australia, which have killed some 180 people and destroyed nearly 800 homes, has been callously and cynically used by ‘Sydney Daily Telegraph’ senior journalist and right-wing blogger at that paper, Piers Akerman, to push his extreme anti-Islam hate mongering by claiming that Islamists may have deliberately lit the fires as a terrorist act.

Akerman has opportunistically and outrageously abused the victims of the tragedy and taken advantage of his senior position with the newspaper in order to propagandise his anti-Islam stance. Needless to say the ‘Sydney Daily Telegraph’ is a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper. Need one say more!

Akerman, well known for many years in Australia for his ultra right-wing racist views, has stepped over the line by exploiting and abusing the tragedy of those that have died and those that have survived but lost everything they had, simply to push his racist Islamophobic propaganda.

UPDATE

One wonders how long it will be before some troublemaker takes up the advise given by Neil Livingston of Executive Action LLC, a so-called ‘security’ company (mercenary) operating out of the US, who has said “terrorists could claim responsibility for the Australian inferno even if they had nothing to do with it - though he added that could ignite a 'hell of a backlash' against Muslims in Australia”.
Just as easily, a Muslim-hater could also claim responsibility while pretending to be a ‘Jihadist’. As has been shown, the lunatic Islamophobic Piers Akerman has already suggested that Jihadists may have been responsible. It would be just a matter of time before one of Akerman’s racist bloggies takes up the challenge of deceit to false-flag the Muslim community as the perpetrators of the fires.

Friday, February 06, 2009

The stories now emerging out of the Gaza less than three weeks after the Israeli ground withdrawal suggest that rather than Palestinian fighters using civilians as human shields, it has been Israeli soldiers that have been deliberately, callously and indiscriminately shooting to death surrendered civilians, including very young children, in situations and circumstances where no Palestinian fighters have been in the vicinity.

Out of all the devastation I have seen so far, there is one story in particular that I think the world needs to hear. I met a mother who was at home with her ten children when Israeli soldiers entered the house. The soldiers told her she had to choose five of her children to “give as a gift to Israel.” As she screamed in horror they repeated the demand and told her she could choose or they would choose for her. Then these soldiers murdered five of her children in front of her. The concept of “Jewish morality” is truly dead. We can be fascists, terrorists, and Nazis just like everybody else.

There were no Palestinian fighters in the vicinity.

Sameh Habeeb and Janet Zimmerman tell the story of how a Palestinian who, with his family and others, had surrendered as Israeli tanks parked near their home. He was then forced to witness his wife, mother and his three daughters aged seven, three and two, all holding white flags, shot and killed by an Israeli soldier in front of him.

One also has to wonder why the mainstream media find it so important to tell the world that the Israelis didn’t actually hit a UN school. Oh… the 43 civilians that were killed just outside of the school, however, are still dead but the important thing, apparently, is that the school wasn’t actually hit.

The fact that there were no Palestinian fighters in the vicinity also seemed to escape the notice of, in this case, the Murdoch press.

No doubt as time goes by there will be many more stories emerging of Israeli atrocities committed against Palestinian citizens in the Gaza.

So far, however, despite all the accusations from the Israelis, not a skerrick of evidence has been found to support their accusations that Palestinian fighters used ‘human shields’.

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Wednesday, February 04, 2009

The propaganda and rhetoric from the Zionists in Israel, their neoconservative and Christian Zionist supporters around the world ever since the overthrow of the fascist Shah in 1979, has been that Iran wants nuclear weapons and has a program to get them.

Today Benjamin Netanyahu, likely to be Israel’s next Prime Minister after the Israeli elections on 10 February, has perpetuated this myth again today when he told the Jerusalem Post that he wanted negotiations with Iran to be ‘closed-ended’ meaning that they must result in Iran giving up uranium enrichment.

The problem, of course, is that Iran has no nuclear weapons program and, therefore, has no need to give up its uranium enrichment program since it is only enriching uranium to level which is required for generating electrical power, something it is legally entitled to do under international law.

The rhetoric, however, hides the real agenda of the Israeli Zionists and their supporters which is to have regime change in Iran so that Israel can dominate in its own region without interference from Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria, all of whom are supported by Iran.

The world should not be fooled by the propaganda. An attack on Iran will not entail just an attack against its nuclear facilities but will consist of a devastating attack against all of Irans military and governmental institutions. There will be no invasion as there was in Iraq; Iran will simply be bombed relentlessly until it submits to US and Israeli demands. It’s as simple as that.

And don’t be fooled by Obama’s charming ways. When push comes to shove, he’ll have no option whatsoever but to support an Israeli initial attack against Iran.

They want nothing less than regime change. The nuclear weapons program rhetoric is merely propaganda for the dumb and gullible.

The Israeli newspapers over the last few days have been filled with reports of threats from Ehud Barak and the Israeli government about Israel dealing a blow, not just to Hezbollah but to Lebanon as a whole in the face of perceived threats to Israel from Hezbollah.

Ha’aretz reported today that Ehud Barak has said in a significant statement ‘the transfer of particular weapons systems from Syria to Hezbollah would obligate Israel to take action in Lebanon’. Within this threat is a not-so-subtle change in Israeli policy with regard to Hezbollah. One might note that the words are: ‘take action in Lebanon’ and not ‘take action against Hezbollah’. This policy was confirmed when Ehud Barak said that any reprisals by Hezbollah for the death of Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed a year ago this month, that Lebanon would be held responsible. Importantly, Barak qualified this by saying:

"Hezbollah is not just a terrorist organisation cavorting in the hills. It also sits around the cabinet table in Beirut, with a sufficient number of ministers to decide on how to act, and therefore the Lebanese government bears overall responsibility. Any attempt to strike at Israel will meet with a response. There is no need to elaborate."

Clearly, if the Israelis decide again to attack Lebanon, then they will not confine their attacks to Hezbollah targets, but all of Lebanon including its regular armed forces. Such an attack could also be followed up by a full on invasion of Lebanon.

Inextricably linked to the Israeli anti-Hezbollah rhetoric is the rhetoric against Iran which has also continued today in the Israeli press as Iran launched its first all-Iranian satellite into orbit yesterday.

Set against the backdrop of threats to Hezbollah, Lebanon and Iran and actual war still continuing in the Gaza is the forthcoming Israeli elections which are now less than a week away but which have somehow taken a back seat in the news due to the ongoing Gaza crisis. One can be forgiven for wondering why the Israeli wars and threats of wars has not become a major election issue among the parties. The reason for this is simple. For all of the parties the question is not so much; shall we or shall we not crush Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran but rather; how best can we achieve this. In other words, all of the major parties want to see regime change in Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah eliminated from existence.

The upshot is that, regardless of when war starts, as far as the Israelis are concerned with regard to the elections, it’s merely an opportunity for the Israelis to change the guard but otherwise pursue the same policy. If this is the case then one should not be surprised if the Israelis decide to attack Iran or Hezbollah even on the eve of the election. It will simply be business as usual as the top managers pass in and out of the doors.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

After what the Gazan people have recently gone through, and, indeed, still are, one has to wonder what it is that makes ‘President’ Mahmoud Abbas so cock sure that he has any credibility left with which to govern the Palestinian people or even a mandate from the Palestinian people to continue doing so. What authority he has is that given to him and the corrupt elements within the Fatah movement by the US and the current Israeli government who consider him and Fatah the better of two evils rather than a real partner for peace and a negotiator for the creation of Palestinian state.

After the elections, which are now only a week away, the notion of any possibility of a Palestinian state will entirely disappear – which will leave Abbas with nothing except the ability to promise to the Palestinian people that things may improve for them if they accept Israeli domination. An Israel under a Likud government led by Benjamin Netanyahu will not be talking about a Palestinian state under any conditions; will not be considering any right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their lands; and the only aspect of the settlements in the West Bank that will be discussed is how they can be expanded. The Palestinians can forget any idea of any part of Jerusalem reverting to Palestinian control and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip can look forward only to being further squeezed into oblivion prior to the Israeli Zionists forcing them out entirely and occupying their land.

Palestinians will likely reject Abbas and support a movement that demands a state within which Palestinians – all Palestinians – can be free and which includes all of the lands that were taken from them.

Abbas has nothing left to offer the Palestinian people and has lost the authority the people gave him. To many he is seen as a traitor, indeed, some have suggested that it was Abbas supporters in the Gaza that had collaborated with the Israelis in their attack on the Gaza and even lobbed rockets from the Gaza into Israel as part of a false flag series of operations to provide Israel with an excuse to finally crush Hamas in the hope that Fatah and Abbas will regain power there once Hams have been removed. The reality is, however, that Netanyahu and his ultra right-wing Zionist followers have no more liking for Abbas and Fatah than they do for Hamas and have absolutely no intention of allowing anyone to govern the Gaza except themselves.

The simple fact is; the Palestinian people voted for Hamas to govern them. The Western world and the Israelis don’t like it? Tough! It’s called democracy! Abbas is a usurper and has nothing to offer. Hamas offers a fighting chance and has demonstrated their tenacity to resist Zionist oppression. The world should support the movement democratically chosen by the people – like it or not.

Monday, February 02, 2009

The West’s war against the Afghan people never was winnable. Over the last few centuries there have been many a great power including the British Empire and the Soviet Union that has tried, but failed. The current mob of invaders, armed with the most sophisticated weapons in the world, who came to conquer a land defended only by a rag-tag group of fighters armed with little more than basic hand weapons and a will to win, look like they are about to join the list of failed great powers that have attempted to conquer Afghanistan.

Prior to the US presidential elections there was talk of running down the troop numbers in Iraq and shifting them to Afghanistan for a surge against the Taliban but the new President has made no moves at all to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan. Indeed, now the word is, according to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, that there simply is ‘no military solution to that problem’. As a result, some of America’s allies are also now reassessing their role in Afghanistan.

Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has said Australia staunchly supports the efforts in Afghanistan but in his discussion with Obama has not pushed for more troops to go there and is unlikely to send more unless asked to. Australia’s Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, who has twice visited Afghanistan, has expressed frustration about the situation there because on both visits he was unable to venture outside of the compound where the Australian troops are based, an indication of the extent of allied failures – and therefore Taliban successes – after more than seven years of fighting.

On top of the military failures, there is also the problem of maintaining an increasingly incompetent Hamid Karzai, the US puppet president installed after the initial success of ousting the Taliban government. Under his rule what little semblance of ‘democracy’ did exist has all but disappeared to be replaced by corruption, drug-lords, war-lords and nepotism all of which has played into the hands of the resurgent and increasingly successful Taliban.

Then, of course, there is the still unresolved reason for having gone into Afghanistan in the first place; to chase down Osama bin Laden and destroy ‘al Qaeda’. There is still no sign of Osama bin Laden (and nor is there ever likely to be unless someone who knows where he is buried some day decides to tell the world) and, if we are expected to believe the neocon press and the western media, ‘al Qaeda’ is bigger and better than ever it was before and now has offices in just about every country that has large Muslim population.

All things considered, the Afghanistan adventure, after more than seven years of fighting, has been a complete and utter disaster.

As with Obama’s policy now of talking to Iran, so too he should consider talking to the Taliban because a negotiated settlement with them is the only way out for the West.

The West can never win in Afghanistan. Which means, ultimately, they can only lose.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

The Israeli propaganda at the outset was that they merely wanted to stop the rockets and mortars being fired into Israel from the Gaza and to destroy the Hamas infrastructure. But, as the dust settled after the Israelis had pulled out, Israel’s true intentions are just now being revealed.

The stories now emerging depict a deliberately planned attempt by the Israelis to sow the seeds of the destruction of the Palestinian peoples in the Gaza Strip. Apart from destroying homes and buildings and indiscriminately murder and maim innocent civilians including hundreds of children, Israel has also methodically set out to destroy both the Gazans ability to feed themselves and also to destroy the last remnants of an economy based on horticultural and agricultural production within the Strip.

Clearly, the intention of the Israelis FROM THE BEGINNING was to deprive the Palestinians in the Gaza of the ability to continue to survive. It is not the intention of the Israelis to destroy Hamas; it is the intention of the Israelis to METHODICALLY AND DELIBERATELY DESTROY THE PALESTINIANS ABILITY TO SURVIVE OR CONTINUE TO DESIRE LIVING IN THE GAZA.

The world should make no mistakes about what Israeli intentions are for the Gaza. They wish to bring the Palestinians to their knees regardless of who is in charge of the Strip, Hamas or Fatah, in order to make the Palestinian people there want to leave so that the settlers can return and eventually have the Strip become a part of Israel.

The quicker the world is able to understand that the ONLY goal of the Israelis is to clear the Strip of Palestinians for it to eventually become a part of Greater Israel then the quicker the world can insist that Israel stop their monstrous genocidal expansionist plans and, if they refuse, then to demand intervention via strong UN sanctions insisting that ultimately a state or states will exist where Israelis and Arabs live peacefully together or side by side.

The people of the world, particularly the people of the United States, must now see that what the true intentions of the Zionists of Israel are and demand that their leaders stop all support of them.

The genocidal intentions of the Zionists of Israel have been exposed. It’s time for the peoples of the world to demand an end to it.

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About Me

is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
All material on this site is available for use without permission but it would be appreciated if the source is acknowledged.